UCLA Ready for Life at the Top : College basketball: Bruins pull away from Sun Devils, 98-81, to keep record perfect and assure themselves of No. 1 ranking.

Better file a traffic report on this one. The Arizona State Sun Devils were run over, 98-81, Saturday afternoon at Pauley Pavilion, then picked themselves off the floor and had only one question:

Did anyone get the number of that team?

Well, that would be No. 1, of course.

In an afternoon of rainbow three-pointers and rim-swaying dunks, UCLA became college basketball’s front-runner, at least for a week, and assured itself of the top spot in the rankings when the new poll comes out Monday night.

Shon Tarver believes this can mean only one thing.

“It just so happens now we’re No. 1 officially,” he said. “The spotlight is on us.”

And so it is, not long after its warm glow had cooled on its previous subjects (see North Carolina, Duke, Arkansas and Kansas).

The Bruins await the new Associated Press poll with impressive credentials--a 13-0 record, 6-0 in the Pacific 10 Conference--and a keen sense of those fallen teams in whose sneaker prints they now follow.

“It’s a great honor to be ranked No. 1, but you can’t get too carried away, you know,” Charles O’Bannon said. “I mean, it’s only January.”

Also lending itself to a sense of caution is the matter of the No. 1-for-a-week syndrome. Well, maybe, O’Bannon said.

“We are aware of that, but those are other teams, not us,” he said.

And so it went in the UCLA locker room, where bravado and good humor abounded, qualities that were sometimes in short supply a little earlier on the court.

All five starters reached double figures--led by Ed O’Bannon and Tyus Edney with 21 points. As nice as that was for the Bruins, they enjoyed equally good fortune with a 15-rebound advantage and a bedeviling defensive strategy that took away Arizona State’s chief weapon.

Jim Harrick spread out his defenders to try to limit Stevin Smith, Isaac Burton, and Ron Riley, all impresarios of the three-point line.

It worked. Arizona State made only seven of 25 three-pointers.

By the same token, 6-foot-9 Mario Bennett took advantage of the spread-out defense and scored 26 points in 37 minutes.

Ed O’Bannon assessed the strategy: “We won the game, so I guess it worked.”

True enough, although the Bruins weren’t able to put some distance between themselves and Arizona State until the stretch.

UCLA led at halftime, 48-41, behind Tarver’s 13 points, but Arizona State tied the score, 64-64, with 11:34 remaining on a dunk by Riley.

Up stepped Cameron Dollar, the freshman guard who had exactly one three-pointer this season. Dollar spotted up behind the line and calmly made his second.

Dollar had a conversation with himself on the way back downcourt. “I said, ‘Wow, we’re up three now,’ ” he said.

Edney made it five on a drive through the middle and, after the Sun Devils had scored, kept it at five with a driving layup.

The game’s biggest back-to-back plays were then performed by Ed O’Bannon. First, he rejected Dwayne Fontana inside, then raced downcourt, took a pass from Edney and rammed the ball through the hoop so hard, the standard swayed for a while.

“You’ve got to make sure,” O’Bannon said.

And with a victory so close, UCLA made absolutely certain. The Bruins made 12 free throws in the last 3:47, needing only two field goals, both by Ed O’Bannon, to turn a nine-point margin into 17.

All that was left was to count up the votes and see who is No. 1.

“I see us matching up with anyone in the country, pretty much,” said Edney, who has 47 points in his last two games.

Arizona State Coach Bill Frieder was lavish in his praise of UCLA and how it deserves to be ranked No. 1, at least to a limit.

“They beat Arizona decisively and they beat us decisively,” he said. “I’m not saying they’re going to win the national championship and I’m not saying three weeks from now they will be No. 1.”

Bennett’s own critique of the Bruins’ ranking was sort of limited, curtailed to be more specific.

“I told us not to say anything about it,” Bennett said. “I don’t want to cause any controversy. They are a good team that beat us on one of our bad days. That’s the best way I can put it.”

Harrick put it his way.

“(No. 1) is something we’ve strived for and it’s nice to reach that pinnacle, but we’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said.

After the poll comes out Monday night, the Bruins play Thursday at Stanford and next Sunday at California.

“That should be interesting,” Ed O’Bannon said. “They’re going to be gunning for us, plain and simply, because not only are we No. 1, but we’ve got UCLA stenciled on our chests.”